How To Post Photos to Facebook From Your Mac

Apple has removed the direct link between the Photos app and Facebook in macOS Mojave. But it is still easy to upload Photos to Facebook using the Facebook website. You can use the Media option in the file open dialog, drag and drop into the file open dialog, drag directly onto the Facebook page, and a variety of other options. If you have trouble picking out a photo this way, you can always enlarge the photos you are viewing, or drag and drop direct from the Photos app or the Finder.

Before Mojave, for a few versions of Mac OS, we had the ability to directly post photos from the Photos app to Facebook. Apple cut that link probably due to privacy concerns. So now we just have to do it through the website. But if you're used to doing it through Photos then you've got to kind of relearn how to do it normally through the website.

So here I am on my Facebook page and I want to create a new post. I can click on Photo Video or Photo Video here. Now the Facebook interface is going to change all the time but basically I click on one of these and it's going to ask me to select a photo. It brings up this File, Open Dialogue here. Now if I have a file I want to upload it's pretty easy. But if the photo is in my Photos app then I won't see it here.

But you can look on the left sidebar and you'll see things like Favorites, iCloud, Location. All the stuff you see in the left sidebar of the Finder. But when it's a File Open Dialogue like this you'll see some additional options. One of them being Media and under that Photos. You click on that and that is actually going to allow you to access the photos in your Photos Library just like they were files. As a matter of fact it's better because you're going to see images of them. Here you can pick things like Moments, Collection, Years, Album, all sorts of things. All the stuff that you're used to seeing when you go into the Photos app.

I've selected Favorites here. I'm gathering a bunch of photos I want to post to Facebook. A lot of times I like to mark them quickly as favorites so I can quickly find them here, post them, and then I'll unmark them from Favorites when I'm done. So here I can go and look at these photos. Now if the photos are too small you can use your trackpad or Apple mouse and pinch out to enlarge just the way you would shrink or enlarge any object in Mac OS. So I can make this a different size. I can also select and then hit the spacebar and it will go to fill this whole screen here. I can actually use the arrow keys to flip through them. So I can hit the spacebar again to actually zoom back out. I can pick the photo that I want to post and I hit Choose.

But these aren't my only options. There are other ways to do it as well. For instance, if I go back to just choosing from the Finder I can actually drag and drop an image file I've got. So here I've got an image file in the Finder. I can drag and drop that in there and that's all I need to do. As a matter of fact a lot of interfaces, like Facebook, will allow you to actually drag and drop directly into the element. You can see if I drag and drop it in here it's allowing me to actually put it in there. Now the website has to have some pretty complex code to do that. Not all sites are going to do that.

Sometimes there's just a little button that's says Choose image, or something like that, and you can drag it into that button. But having this advanced functionality of the site actually recognizing that you're dragging a photo there is something you'll find in Facebook and some other places but not everywhere.

You can also just drag and drop from the Photos app. So I can bring up the Photos app here and I can find a photo that I want to post. I can drag in there and you can see that works as well. Not only that but if I were to go and use this open dialogue here I can actually drag it into here and you can see it adds it. It's deep inside my Photos Library here so all sorts of weird things are going to appear. But there is the photo. I can actually choose it now.

So a lot of different ways that you can bring your photos into Facebook pretty easily even though the Photos app is not linked anymore directly to Facebook.

Comments: 10 Responses to “How To Post Photos to Facebook From Your Mac”

Richard Fuhr

12/5/18 @ 12:26 pm

As Gary pointed out in this video, it is no longer possible to use the Mac Photos app on the most recent version of macOS (Mojave) to directly post photos to Facebook. However, it is still possible to use the Photos app on the most recent version of iOS on the iPhone and iPad to post photos to Facebook. I find it strange that Apple decided to remove this capability on the Mac but retain it on the iPhone and iPad.

Richard: There are some big differences between how sharing of this nature is accomplished on iOS and macOS. For instance, notice that there is no Facebook app on macOS like there is iOS. But all of the sharing options hook either into the system or to apps. I suppose Facebook could create a macOS app that added a sharing option on macOS.

Jenny: You can post the pictures any way that Facebook allows you in the Web interface. I don’t really use Facebook albums, but if that is something you can do normally, then you can certainly use this technique to post them there.

charles willard

12/7/18 @ 7:57 am

The virtual destruction of Photos in Mojave has convinced me that Apple is no longer the user friendly company but now focused on serving IT specialists. Been faithful since the 1980s but seriously considering switching away from Apple.

charles: “virtual destruction?” What do you mean by that? Photos is pretty much the same as it was in High Sierra with a few new things. The removal of the Facebook hooks from macOS was generally seen as a good thing considering Facebook’s privacy issues this year.

Nancy Brodovsky

12/9/18 @ 3:35 pm

Gary, My concern is that with over 30,000 pictures it takes so long to upload to find the pictures I would want to include in facebook

Nancy: Not sure what you mean. Do you simply mean that it takes too long to look through 30,000 to find the ones you want? If it is a recent one, it will be at the end of the list. Or, if you have it in an album, look in the album instead. You can also use Moments, Collections and Years to narrow it down quickly.
What I like to do, if I am posting say 10 pictures from something I just did, is mark them as Favorites (heart icon) in Photos. Then I look in “Favorites” when selecting to upload and see just those 10 photos. Can’t get any quicker than that. Then I clear out the favorites to use next time. But I could also create a temporary album in Photos that works the same way.

George B Wolff

12/16/18 @ 11:51 am

HELP! I tried everything you said gary, but when I go to the Media-photos file you mention I find none of my pictures there…not even ones I have edited today. When I go back to the mac photo app, I can edit my photos, but i can’t post them up to FB as I used to (as you said) but I also have to way to put the finished photos where I want to get at them from FB. The export control doesn’t help. HELP!

George: So what do you see when you try to use Media->Photos? What shows up? You can always use the drag-and-drop method I show in the video too. Or, just export (or drag and drop) to a folder or the Desktop and upload from there.

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